Oak Hill Cemetery, the place of internment for Smithsonian Secretaries Joseph Henry and Spencer Baird (see Preservation Quarterly, Fall, 1994), is a significant Washington landmark . Founded in 1849 by William W. Corcoran (the wealthy 19th century banker who commissioned the original Corcoran Gallery building, now the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery of Art), Oak Hill was Washington's first rural landscape cemetery and part of a new revolution in the design of burial grounds which swept through east coast cities during the mid-19th century. The emergence of the rural landscape cemetery came in response to the inadequacies of older burial practices in dealing with the urban growth and cultural change in America at the end of the 18th century.
The founders of Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first "rural landscape" cemetery, attempted to address many of the shortcomings of past burial grounds, particularly their lack of space and grim appearance, by adapting the "picturesque" style of landscape design for use in the cemetery. The informal, naturalistic beauty of the "picturesque" style, based on 18th century English landscape gardens, accommodated the psychological needs of the relatives of the deceased and cemetery visitors. The ex-urban site of the new cemetery also dealt with many of the physical limitations of the earlier urban burial grounds. The immediate popularity of Mount Auburn Cemetery reflected the success of this new approach and inspired extensive replication in cities throughout America. The widespread dissemination of the "rural landscape" type, exemplified by the planning of later cemeteries like Oak Hill in Georgetown, in turn helped establish a new tradition of landscape design in America.
Prior to the 1830s, the deceased were buried primarily in churchyards or city commons. By the early 19th century, however, many old burial grounds had become overcrowded and unsightly spaces in the increasingly dense urban fabric of expanding east coast cities . Dilapidated grave yards, such as King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston, consumed tracts of prime real estate and provided stark contrasts to the vitality of life in the bustling city centers. The foul smells issuing from the crypts and semi-exposed graves also provided offensive and unwelcome reminders of the proximity of these symbols of death and decay to the activities of daily life. As public health concerns grew over the decomposition of corpses in the heart of downtown, progressive city leaders began to look for alternatives to the traditional churchyard burial .
Coincidental with the growth of physical problems associated with urban burial grounds, new attitudes toward death and commemoration began evolving in America at the end of the 18th century. Conventional interments in small, sometimes unmarked graves in local churchyards became less appropriate as cities grew beyond the more intimate scale of the small town. Waves of new immigrants and shifts in native populations often erased the communal memory of the locations of ancestors' graves, even of famous persons. In some cases, smaller family burial grounds were obliterated entirely by urban development when ownership of the land passed out of the hands of descendants. Growing concerns over maintaining a connection with the past helped generate interest in permanent memorials for the deceased . Related to the movement to erect public monuments for national heroes, the enthusiasm for memorials also reflected a desire to define the history of the new nation and perpetuate the virtues of American civilization. Cemetery monuments, in celebrating the lives of certain worthy individuals, became one means of cultivating American nationalism .
European cemeteries, such as Pere La Chaise in France, set precedents for more humane burial practices. At Pere La Chaise, marble memorials and trees offered the consoling power of art and nature in place of the traditional depiction of the horror of death manifested in the grim burial grounds . Arranged in close proximity along the major corridors throughout the cemetery, the grave monuments at Pere La Chaise gave the impression of a "city of the dead" separate from the world of the living, where visitors could come to mourn the deceased or celebrate the lives of notables interred there. English landscape gardens provided another source of inspiration for the new cemeteries. The "picturesque" style of planning, which characterized these 17th and 18th century landscapes of the English nobility, utilized informal plantings and curvilinear paths to evoke a sense of primordial nature. Enlightenment thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic appreciated these naturalistic environments for their associations with individual liberty and antique virtue. Moreover, the natural world emerged in the minds of many progressive intellectuals at the beginning of the 19th century as a moralizing force in contrast to the decay of values evident in urban life. For Americans, rural environments also held positive associations with America's agrarian heritage and evoked images of an unspoiled Arcadian wilderness at a time when industrial development was rapidly consuming tracts of land in metropolitan areas. With the founding of Mount Auburn, these disparate trends coalesced into a movement for the creation of rural landscape cemeteries. Jacob Bigelow, a Boston physician and philanthropist, formed a voluntary society in 1825 for the creation of a new ex-urban cemetery. Concerned about maintaining a "rural" setting within the confines of the rapidly expanding Boston metropolitan area, Bigelow and others chose a scenic property in Cambridge overlooking the Charles River as the location for their enterprise . In 1830, George W. Brimmer provided the farm land (which he had originally purchased for his own use) for the cemetery, later named "Mount Auburn." After acquiring and consecrating the land, Bigelow began to sell 15x20 foot plots. Investment in these lots, purchased for eternity and tended by the cemetery staff, helped raise the initial funding for the development of the landscape. The use of private financing and the sale of lots in perpetuity signaled Mount Auburn's break from traditional burial practices in New England.
Mount Auburn's founders adopted the naturalistic, informal planning of the "picturesque" style to accentuate the rural character of its ex-urban site. The initial construction of the landscape at Mount Auburn began in 1831. In place of regimented rows of grave markers, Henry S. Dearborn, one of the founders of the cemetery, laid out miles of winding paths following the contours of the hills and valleys in the scenic landscape. By 1832, he had overseen the completion of most of the major landscape features. The property retained a forested appearance, broken only by the occasional field, pond or hill top. Dearborn enhanced the native beauty of the landscape with imported trees and plants associated with or evocative of death and mourning. In this manner, he constructed a landscape which provided consolation to the grief stricken and a suitable, even pleasant place, to reflect on the lives of the departed. By contrasting the strict rectilinearity of the urban grid, the informal, naturalistic environment of the cemetery became a space both physically and spiritually apart from the rest of the city .
The presence of large, sculptural monuments throughout the landscape, replacing the small thin slabs of the burial grounds, reflected a new view of the role of the cemetery. The death's head motif, common on older burial ground markers, was replaced by a neo-classical aesthetic, symbolizing the shift toward a more secular, liberal view of death and salvation . Elaborate grave markers celebrated the life of the deceased individual, rather than merely indicating a place of burial. Descendants or other visitors could come to reflect on the deceased's contributions in life. The monuments preserved a sense of continuity with the past while providing lessons in civic morality in their recognition of the virtues of the departed. When the deceased played a major role in the nation or even the local community, the division between family memorials and civic monuments blurred, as sightseers often outnumbered relatives in visits to the grave. By objectifying familial and civil values, cemeteries responded to the need both for private remembrances and public monuments .
Mount Auburn set a precedent for cemetery design which enjoyed great popularity in other cities as well. Washington was one of the earliest cities to have its own landscape cemetery. In 1848, William W. Corcoran purchased from George Cobin, a Georgetown landowner, 15 acres of land comprising an area formerly called Parrott's Woods. Under his direction, the Cemetery Company, organized to oversee Oak Hill, was incorporated by an Act of Congress on March 3, 1849. In 1851, Captain George F. de la Roche finished laying out the series of winding paths and level terraces which descended down into the valley created by Rock Creek. By 1853, Corcoran had spent over $55,000 to fund the preparation of the roads and terraces and to erect a chapel and gate house.
Oak Hill embodied the planning ideals of the picturesque, exemplified by Mount Auburn cemetery. The paths respect the contours of the hills, winding an informal, curvilinear course around the landscape. The series of natural rises and hill tops reveal long views across the landscape and down into the creek bed. The addition of marble commemorative monuments and sculptural grave markers, commissioned in later years by prominent Washington families and individuals, completed the romantic quality of the landscape. The combination of natural beauty with manmade embellishments intended to evoke poetic associations. Somber reflection became the hallmark of the romantic era landscape cemetery.
Many specific features of Oak Hill underscored its connection to Mount Auburn. The path names, such as "Primrose" and "Violet", followed the fashion established at Mount Auburn for names inspiring pastoral associations. Details from the top of the fence at Oak Hill closely resembled the open lotus form which embellished the iron railings at Mount Auburn. The inclusion of a small English Gothic chapel (designed by James Renwick) on the grounds of Oak Hill closely paralleled Gothic chapel selected for Mount Auburn over the originally proposed "temple" structure. The beauty and novelty of rural cemeteries had the unintended consequence of creating spaces immensely popular with city dwellers. Seeking relief from urban life, visitors flocked to these early cemeteries to picnic, ride horses and tour the bucolic settings. Even more restrictive visitation rules imposed later at Mount Auburn and other cemeteries did little to stem the tide of persistent tourists. As this trend continued, horticulturists, landscape enthusiasts and others concerned with the quality of urban life began to call for parks within the city limits created for the diurnal recreation of the living in addition to those intended for the eternal repose of the dead. As Andrew Jackson Downing, the famous, mid-19th century landscape designer, noted in an essay in the "Horticulturist," "But does not the general interest, manifested in these cemeteries, prove that public gardens, established in a liberal and suitable manner, near our larger cities, would be equally successful?...."
Early landscape designers such as Frederick Law Olmsted were commissioned by municipal governments to create landscape parks out of the developing urban fabric of the expanding east coast cities. Inspired in part by the informal layout of these early cemeteries, the city parks of that era were almost universally characterized by winding paths, broad vistas and picturesque bodies of water. Cemeteries like Oak Hill influenced the landscaping of many great public spaces in urban America, such as Central Park in New York or, closer to home, the Smithsonian Pleasure Grounds, located at one time on the Mall in front of the "Castle" building. For cities, the rural landscape cemetery became not only an answer to the needs of the deceased but also the vision of a more humane way of living.